Thank you! AHHH

30 days ago I started this Kickstarter for my little Hamlet book, and honestly believed it could reach $20k. I thought, absolutely best-case scenario, we'd get near $100k near the end of the pledge drive. I wrote up a bunch of stretch goals up to that point, hit "submit", and crossed my fingers.

We hit that goal of $20k in less than three and a half hours, and thirty days later we've stopped with a grand total of $580,905 from over 15 thousand backers. The book has gone from a black and white dealie to a fully-illustrated, full-colour volume and the extras have grown to include multiple-path bookmarks, books going to schools, AND of course the Squishable Yorick skull. We blasted through five complete sets of stretch goals and then some. We became the single most-funded publishing project in Kickstarter history.

Also I promised to explode something.

It's all thanks to you, and your support of this crazy project. I've said this every day for a month and meant it every time: thank you so much. We've got a schedule to follow from here on out to bring the book to production, and I'll be posting updates here often - at least once every two weeks - so you'll know how far along we are. I've seen other Kickstarters not post anything after they close and it results in sad people instead of awesome fun times! I THINK YOU KNOW WHICH OF THOSE TWO OPTIONS I PREFER.

If you pledged above $30 - with or without shipping - and want the Kickstarter-exclusive ecard with art by Noelle Stevenson be sure to fill in this form right now because the first emails will be going out tomorrow!

Congrats! But man, I didn't realize that for only $5 more I could've gotten so much more stuff! There were so many long, detailed updates that I couldn't read them all--just not enough time! And the final one that mentioned I could get all those extras came while I was asleep here in Japan--by the time I got up, it was too late to upgrade. I wish all that had been more clearly spelled out.

I now have ten cents (U.S.) in my bank account because of Ryan North and Hamlet... And it is totally worth it! May both these names live on in English literary canon forever and ever and ever. I can't wait for the day that "Ryan North's Hamlet" becomes more well known than that other fellow's version! You know, what's his name. Robert Waggsticke? Something like that. :P

Ryan, I pledged at $20 only to discover today that I missed out on all sorts of goodies by not having $25. Is there any way I can pitch in more to get those extras? As happy as I should be feeling right now, I'm totally bummed.

You know what you should do? You should DIE AND HAVE YOUR REMAINS EXPLODED IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO. Also, will the whole "temporarily doing something that Kickstarter doesn't want you to do" come up when other people eventually start competing for Kickstarter's most funded project? I sure hope not...